Managing Workforce Biggest Challenge For Pork Sector

Mar 30, 2020

Officials with Manitoba Pork have been busy dealing with the fallout from COVID-19.

Andrew Dickson is the organization's general manager.

"The issue here is how to manage the workforce and cope with all the potential for absenteeism, dealing with if people might get sick, having the appropriate distances in the workplace and that sort of thing. The other thing is a number of businesses have altered there business structure and how they deal with people. There's a lot of reorganization of the labour force."

Dickson says keeping Temporary Foreign Workers coming to Canada is extremely important to the pork sector.

"Our sector has always relied on foreign workers and we've been able to make the various programs work and we're very pleased that the federal government is trying to ensure that we have a supply of workers that can come in and do the work."

He notes so far, foreign workers have been able to overcome the scheduling and travel challenges associated with the COVID-19 crisis.

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Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.